31 July 2008

More on Stein

Thanks to everyone for allowing me the opportunity to share my understanding of Tender Buttons. For anyone interested in hearing her read OBJECTS, you can do so FREE at: http://beemp3.com/download.php?file=205371&song=1+-+Objects.

After going back through my notes, I wanted to leave you with these thoughts:

-Stein is not worried about making sense, but rather "how" to make sense
-Meaning is a byproduct of repeated encounters with her text
-Tender Buttons provides no answers, it's distinction being to establish relationships that we never knew existed
-Become aware that no 2 words are ever exactly the same

Finally, I found this quote by Wallace Fowlie published Dec. 22nd, 1956 in the Saturday Review most appropriate:

"For this is poetry about poetry...A word used by Gertrude Stein does not designate a thing as much as it designates the way in which the thing is possessed, or the way in which the thing is destroyed, or the way whereby the poets has learned to live with it."


1 comment:

Connie said...

Thank you for the further elaboration on Stein's work.This is the kind of breakthrough poetry that isn't like anyting else and would be difficult to comprehend on the first reading. I think Pound disliked her work because it was in excess of words and meanings. Her work was more emotional while Pound is almost more logical and concise. Stein captured a sense of what women may have thought about when she looked at objects or foods.I do appreciate the form and the freedom she created with her poetry but I do still find her work difficult to understand.